Bullying in children’s peer relations

Due to the lack of research, discussion on the definition of bullying among small children is limited and the definition used in research is mainly based on research into bullying among school-aged children (e.g. Alsaker & Gützwiller-Helfenfinger, 2010; Alsaker & Nägele, 2008; Monks et al., 2005; Perren, 2000; Crick, Casas, &

Ku, 1999; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996). Bullying is defined as an interactive rela-tionship which gradually becomes more and more hostile and less equal, and in which the victim’s ability to take action and make decisions gets increasingly nar-row. Over time the victim’s value as a human being is questioned, and eventually the victim can even be seen as responsible for the negative actions against him- or herselves. The victim is isolated and cast out from the community entirely (Crick, Casas, & Ku, 1999; Fors, 1993). On top of this, research indicates that bullying is a relatively stable phenomenon over the years. (Salmivalli, Lappalainen, & Lager-spetz, 1998). The most frequently used definition of bullying was formulated by Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus. According to Olweus (1994 p. 98)., “A person is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons.” He defined negative actions as behaviors that intentionally inflict, or attempt to inflict, injury or discom-fort. Separate negative actions can be defined as bullying if they are continual and occur over a longer period of time. In contrast, occasional, separate and minor negative actions targeted at a variety of people should not be defined as bullying.

(Olweus, 1994.) In most definitions, bullying is seen as an imbalance of power relations between the victim and the bully where the victim has trouble defending him/herself against the negative actions targeted against them (Salmivalli &

Nieminen, 2002). Furthermore, bullying has been seen as part of the problem in interaction processes where a student is regularly hurt, harmed, and/or discrimi-nated against by one or several students without being able to defend him/herself or affect the way he or she is treated (Olweus, 1973; Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Björkqvist, Österman, & Kaukiainen,1996). Some researchers also emphasize the use of power and aggression without highlighting the repetitiveness of the actions (Pepler & Craig, 2009). For decades, bullying has been seen as a group phenome-non where a few people take part in the actual violence while many more observers allow the gradual increase of the violent behavior (Heinemann, 1972). This rela-tively narrow view of bullying as a group phenomenon has been further broadened by Professor Salmivalli, among others. She emphasizes that the group’s passive acceptance of negative actions has a significant influence on the continuation of bullying (Salmivalli et al., 1996).

Within these definitions there are three traits typical of bullying that separate it from everyday squabbling or various conflicts among children. These traits are intentionality, repetitiveness and power imbalance. However, these criteria are somewhat problematic among young children.

Power imbalance takes place within the peer group and has to do with the group dynamic nature of bullying. Since one of the subjects of this study is bully-ing as a group phenomenon in early childhood educational groups, more will be presented on its theoretical background in Chapter 2.3. Of the three criteria for

12 Laura Repo

bullying, intentionality may be the most problematic among young children. As mentioned earlier, bullying leads to a situation where one individual is excluded from the community. This might happen unconsciously due to the fact the group creates the norms which requires the group members to behave certain way. The group decides collectively what kind of behavior is allowed in that group, for ex-ample exclusion or bullying. Thus, it is possible that bullying or excluding is inten-tional behavior for some young children, but it is also possible that the behavior is caused culturally without the individual understanding of the consequences of the behavior (see more in chapter 2.3). Nevertheless, the ultimate outcome is an exclu-sion of certain members. Thus, repetitiveness and duration of an action might be better measurements of bullying than the intentionality of actions. Moreover, the developments of moral abilities or empathy skills are individual, and the intention-ality of an action by a small child is difficult to assess both for researchers and teachers. (Perren & Alsaker, 2006). Further, following the dominant Piagetian the-ory (see Piaget, 1952) a child is naturally egocentric. It has been a general belief that young children lack a sense of empathy and therefore are not able to bully.

However, according to more recent research, young children have some capacity for responding empathically to another person’s perspective. Children as young as three are able to show an awareness of other people’s feelings and can identify specific situations that evoke different kinds of affective responses. Hence, children can be viewed as cooperative and helpful by nature. An increasing body of research strengthens the notion that human beings tend to help, share and respect each other (e.g., Sajaniemi & Mäkelä, 2014; Hamann, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2012; Maha-jan & Wynn, 2012; Tomasello, 2009).

Also the requirement of repetitiveness is by no means trouble free. Using the repetitiveness criterion comes with the risk that only repetitive actions and those spanning a relatively long time will be considered bullying. There is an inherent danger that many actions, perceived as degrading and offensive by their victims, and with possible long-term consequences, are ignored. Single attacks may create in the victim a fear of being bullied in the future (Hamarus & Kaikkonen, 2008;

Peura, Pelkonen, & Kirves, 2009).

Some researchers have warned against too strict or narrow definitions of bul-lying (Eriksson, Lindberg, Flygare, & Daneback, 2002; Hamarus, 2006). It is im-portant to remember that children’s experiences of bullying are different both at an individual level and for different age groups. Bullying is a subjective experience and it is important to take the individual nature of the situation into account. Thus, it is important to always take the child’s own experience into account when defin-ing bullydefin-ing. Among small children this is particularly challengdefin-ing due to the level of their linguistic development and their tendency to give concepts variable mean-ings. In the qualitative part of this study no definitions were used. Instead, the aim was to create an understanding how children, early childhood professional and parents understand the phenomenon. In the quantitative part of the study, one aim was to study whether prevention of school bullying is possible even before school age, so it was justifiable to use the same definitions and terminology that is used commonly when studying school bullying.

Bullying among children aged three to six 13

Bullying can be seen as a subtype of aggression. However, not all aggression is bullying (e.g., Ostrov & Kemper, 2015). Aggressive behavior is widely studied among young children. The normative developmental trends in the expression of aggressive behavior decrease dramatically when children come of school age, es-pecially among boys (Ostrov, Masseti, Stauffer, Godleski, Hart, Karch et al., 2009). Aggressive behavior can be divided into two types. Reactive aggressiveness has its roots in frustration-anger theory (e.g., Berkowitz 1989; Stack, Martin, Ser-bin, Ledingham, & Schwatzman, 2011). It occurs as a consequence of threat and provocation and can be described as impulsiveness with anger and a loss of control (Brendgen, Vitaro, Tremblay, & Lavoie, 2001). Proactive aggression is based on social learning theory (Fandrem, Strohmeier, & Roland, 2009) and is manipulative in nature. Behavior is guided by the anticipated advantages of aggression (Merk, de Castro, Koops, & Matthys, 2005). Proactive aggression is dominating and initiated behavior (Vitiello & Stoff, 1997). Despite the overlap between the two subtypes of aggression, reactive and proactive aggression appear to constitute two separate forms of aggression (Merk et al., 2005), and it has been suggested that children with a tendency to reactive aggressiveness are at increased risk of being rejected in their peer group and of becoming both victims and bullies (bully-victims), while children with a tendency to proactive aggressiveness are at increased risk of bully-ing others (Boivin, Hymel, & Bukowski, 1995; Rigby & Slee, 1991). When study-ing specific features in the interaction of children who bully others, victims and bully-victims among preschool-aged children it has been found that children who bully others have trouble in conflict management, harm avoidance and peer sup-port. Victims have problems in joining and maintaining interactions, whereas bully-victims have difficulties in choosing situation-appropriate behaviors (Laak-sonen, 2014).

Several studies have shown that peer rejection might be a risk factor which could lead to becoming involved in bullying (Schuster, 1996; Crick & Grotpeter, 1996: Boivin, Hymel, & Bukowski, 1995). Godleski, Kamper, Ostrov, Hart, &

Blakely-McCure (2014) found in their study that peer rejection increases relational victimization in early childhood and that emotion regulation skill predicts de-creases in peer rejection and physical victimization.

A well-established way to categorize bullying is to divide it into direct and in-direct forms (e.g., Björqvist, Lagerspetz, & Kaukiainen, 1994). In in-direct bullying, the bullies aim their negative actions directly at the victim, for example by hitting, pushing or name-calling. Indirect bullying may include actions such as exclusion, spreading rumors or talking about the victim behind their back (Björqvist, 1996).

Terms such as physical, relational, verbal and psychological bullying are also widely used. There is a great deal of discussion in the field as to what is the right approach—relational and overt aggression, direct or indirect forms, or reactive versus proactive aggression. (Ostrov & Kemper, 2015). Different approaches em-phasize slightly differently on what these concepts includes. For example, Ostrov and Kemper (2015) suggests that direct aggression (or victimization) is most simi-lar to physical acts, while indirect (social aggression) are not synonymous with relational aggression (or victimization). Further, they emphasize that there are con-ceptual similarities between relational, social and indirect forms of victimization,

14 Laura Repo

but also important differences. For example “social victimization includes nonver-bal and vernonver-bal victimization that are not included in the relational victimization construct” (Ostrov & Kemper, 2015, 2). Recently in several studies these concepts have been viewed within the context of bullying studies (e.g., Bradshaw & John-son, 2011). The literature also struggles with cultural differences in aggression and how they are manifested.

Young children focus more on forms of physical aggression in their defini-tions of bullying, whereas school-aged children also pay attention to relational aggression (Monks, Smith, & Swettenham, 2003). Young children easily equate bullying with physical aggression, and physical aggression often forms a part of six-year-old children’s definition of bullying (Smith & Levan, 1995; Vaillancourt, McDougal, Hymel, Krygsman, Miller, Stiver, & Davis, 2008). Furthermore, re-search has shown that bullying takes a decidedly more aggressive form among small children (Crick, Casas, & Mosher, 1997) and indirect bullying methods in-crease as they grow older (Björkqvist, Lagerspetz, & Kaukiainen, 1994). However, in Perren’s (2000) research, indirect bullying methods were common with small children as well. The differences in results may be explained by different data gathering methods. It is likely that the younger the children in question, the more difficult it is for them to connect their feelings of externality with the concept of bullying. In Perren’s study (2000) the material was gathered from adults. Since the research conclusions at this stage are contradictory, I particularly wanted to exam-ine the prevalence of physical bullying compared to psychological bullying among young children. For these reasons I used Höistad’s (2005) definition. He divides bullying into physical, psychological and verbal bullying. An example of psycho-logical bullying would be any behavior where the victim is treated as non-existent:

bullies turn their back on him; he is not answered when he speaks; or the victim is excluded from the group by some other means. In addition, psychological bullying may include different forms of manipulation, such as blackmailing and exclusion.

Physical bullying means physical violence, breaking or hiding the victim’s belong-ings, or something similar. Verbal bullying involves name-calling, spreading gos-sip, teasing and mocking.

2.3 Typical features of bullying

All members of a community influence the norms and values that acquire meaning within the group. Social understanding is constructed in interaction with others, and it varies from group to group. From this it follows that bullying is a gradually-formed behavioral pattern in a community and is adopted by individuals and influ-enced by their actions. Community norms such as group hierarchy (Garandeau, Ihno, & Salmivalli, 2014) or perception of one’s inequality or normality play a role in bullying. In other words, the norms and values developed in and by the group regulate the behavior of the individuals in the group. For example, in some child groups, ethnic background may be a determining feature of disparity and inequal-ity, whereas in other groups such background has no meaning in that sense. Fur-thermore, if according to the group’s informal norms bullying behavior is

com-Bullying among children aged three to six 15

monplace and acceptable, then the behavior is further reinforced by the group.

Dijkstra, Lindeberg, and Veenstra (2008) have pointed out that group norms have a direct effect on how socially rewarding bullying behavior is. When the bully is generally popular within the group, the bullying actions meet with acceptance more often than when the bully is not particularly well-liked. These norms (such as ac-cess to playing with peers) may control an individual’s way of behaving in a group.

Thus, the group’s informal rules and habits may affect an individual’s behavior more than his or her social skills.

According to a socio-cultural point of view, bullying rarely takes place be-tween two individuals. The other members of the community are thought to sup-port (either directly or indirectly) bullying behavior through their attitudes towards it (e.g., Salmivalli et al., 1996). Hence, there is increasing agreement that preven-tion of bullying should be targeted to the entire peer group rather than at individual bullies and victims. Bullying as a group phenomenon is shown in the way the group’s passive acceptance of negative actions has a significant influence on the continuation of bullying (e.g., Salmivalli, 2010). It has been suggested that a high status and an influential role in the peer group can incite bullying behavior (e.g., Garandeau, Hai-Jeong, & Philip, 2011). Children with aggressive behavior are popular in their group, and they often have a high social status. Further, Garandeau, Hai-Jeong and Philip (2011) found in their study that the stricter the hierarchy is within a group, the more popular aggressive children are. Therefore, children who act aggressively do not feel a need to change their behavior; on the contrary, in many child groups bullying is a socially rewarding mechanism to achieve high status and an influential role in the peer group (Sijtsema, Veenstra, Lindenberg, &

Salmivalli, 2009). However, Dijkstra, Lindeberg and Veenstra (2008) noticed in their study that this phenomenon is affected by the group’s norms. When the bully is otherwise popular within the group, the bullying actions meet with acceptance more often than when the bully is not prominently popular among them. Corsaro (2003) and Löfdahl (2006) have shown that young children’s peer cultures encom-pass social structures and hierarchy. According to Corsaro (2003), cultural valua-tions influence and develop the peer culture in the group and affect the individual status and role within the group. Thus, the group is important for the development of different social phenomenon, such as bullying already in the preschool environ-ment. It has been suggested that bullying is socially rewarding (Sijtsema et al., 2009). Reunamo, Kalliomaa, Repo, Salminen, Lee and Wang (2014) have studied children’s responses to bullying situations in preschool groups (children aged 3 to 6). They state in their conclusions that bullying seems to be an effective way to get in contact with other children. The child that bullies others is able to attract other children’s attention and make them process the situation on his or her own terms.

Thus, the situation is rewarding already in early childhood education: bullying is an effective strategy for getting into contact with others and the child that bullies is able to determine the content of the interaction.

It has been noticed that different members of the group have different roles in bullying situations. A bully is someone who actively initiates bullying behavior towards others. The victim is the bully’s target, and bully-victims are those chil-dren who both bully others and are bullied themselves. In addition, various

mem-16 Laura Repo

bers of the peer group take different prosocial or antisocial roles in bullying situa-tions (Salmivalli et al., 1996; Björqvist et al., 1994; Pikas, 1987). These different participant roles were first categorized in Salmivalli’s et al. study (1996). They named the roles as follows: assistants of bullies; reinforcers of bullies; outsiders;

and defenders of the victim. Assistants are children who join the bullies. They are described as active (similar to bullies), but they show more following than leading behavior in bullying situations (Pöyhönen, 2013). Reinforcers provide positive feedback to bullies (for example by laughing or cheering); outsiders withdraw from bullying situations; and defenders side with the victims by comforting and support-ing them (Salmivalli et al., 1996). These roles have since been established in the literature and research and have been found to be relevant for the prevention of bullying (e.g., Salmivalli, Voeten, & Poskiparta, 2011). For example Pöyhönen (2013) found that children who thought that they were able to influence a bullying situation were more eager to support the victim. When action is taken to try to di-minish bullying behaviors in a group, it is equally important to increase the number of defenders as it is to lower the number of assistants and reinforcers (Salmivalli et al., 2011). Bullying as a group phenomenon is clearly an under-researched subject in preschool groups. Previously, it has been discussed that bullying among younger children might be more a matter of dyadic relationships rather than a group phe-nomenon (Monks, Smith, & Swettenham, 2005; Monks & Smith, 2010).

Previous studies suggest that children with disabilities (SEN) are more fre-quent targets of peer victimization, social exclusion and physical aggression com-pared with their non-disabled peers (e.g., Rose, Monda-Amaya, & Espelage, 2011;

Norwich & Kelly, 2004; Mishna, 2003; Whitney, Smith, & Thompson, 1994). Ac-cording to Rose et al. (2011) children with disabilities are at great risk for bullying others as well. There is evidence that this increased risk of peer victimization is associated with lack of social competence, academic difficulties, disruptive behav-ior and language impairment (e.g., Bauminger, Edelsztein, & Morash, 2005; Whit-ney et al., 1994; Kaukiainen, Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Tamminen, Vauras, Mäki et al., 2002; Savage, 2005). These problems have been linked to internalizing prob-lems associated with peer rejection (Coie & Cillessen, 1993; Savage, 2005). Ac-cording to Swearer, Wang, Maag, Siebecker and Frerichs (2012) students (ages 9–

16) who received special education were 1.43 times more likely to self-identify as bully-victims than their classmates without the needs for special education. Rose et al. (2011) suggest that victimization of SEN students may be exacerbated by indi-vidual character traits or an inability to interpret social cues effectively. Emerging body of research on bullying and children with SEN (Swearer, Wang, Maag, Sie-becker, & Frerichs, 2012; Son et al., 2012) indicates that there are significant con-nections that deserve further attention despite the problems concerning definitions in both fields: bullying and SEN children. Similar findings have been observed in preschool settings (Son, Parish, & Peterson, 2012).

Children with developmental difficulties represent a heterogeneous group who often receive special education (McManus, Carle, & Rapport, 2014). Children with special educational needs have a number of competing definitions and

Children with developmental difficulties represent a heterogeneous group who often receive special education (McManus, Carle, & Rapport, 2014). Children with special educational needs have a number of competing definitions and